Giving Ice Snake More Combat Viability With Cci (and In General)

Spoiler: Ramble and Unnecessary Long Introduction

To anyone who has even the slightest idea about mage's spells, it should be obvious that Meteor is the only viable damage option available, and Ice Snake is extremely underwhelming in comparison, especially against CCI - which a majority of bosses now have.
I don't think that mage should necessarily have great damage because heal allows for pseudo-invincible builds while still maintaining low costs and respectable meteor damage, but I do think that the general quality/usability of it's tools should be better.

That's probably an unnecessarily a long intro, but the point I am trying to get across is that ice snake has super limited usability - which is what my suggestion hopes to address.

Okay okay so, currently the effects of Ice Snake are:

• 70% Damage
• 50% Water Damage
• Freezing
• Slowing Down Enemies

With these conversions, an ice snake would do somewhere in the neighbourhood of ~2,100 damage with a slightly damage oriented build (My TWFA build does around 1700 and it is pretty tanky so eeh estimation), which in my opinion is a waste of mana in raids especially, because there's zero benefit gained from deciding to cast Ice Snake instead of heal/meteor since they're measurably better.

My suggestion, instead of touching the damage or attributes, is to give Ice Snake a new "binding" effect that deals additional damage when broken. I'm not exactly sure on the numbers for this, and whether or not it should be restricted to melee or allow for spells too.

To show how this works, I'll be ripping off images from google and making a terrible illustration.
https://imgur.com/a/wc105It

I think this would be a cool change because:

• It would allow Mage to deal damage in a more diverse manner, and act as a slight increase to dps
• Ice Snake would have a strong incentives to use, rather than just cycling meteor-heal, even on some more mana tight builds.
• It would give Mage more support tools; it could be used as an increase to the caster's own dps, but builds that focus more on tanking and healing would still have a reason to cast ice snake, even if it for the sake of others in a raid for example.
• Mobs with CCI would still take damage from this, so Ice Snake doesn't become completely useless against CCI enemies.

Honestly, I probably ignored lots of obvious things when coming up with this, so criticism and suggestions are welcome, just don't be a cunt about it

 

That is a very good illustration, I hope to learn from you Dwicey

 

Is this just Wind Prison 2, the explanation makes a bit of sense but it feels a bit confusing.

 

Hmm I mean, if you had to compare it to a powder special Wind Prison would probably be the closest thing to it, yeah. The main difference would be 1) no knockback 2) the way they're activated, since with this, enemies get "marked" on the next hit, which is a bit more like curse, and when they get hit, the mark is just removed much like wind prison. The illustration is probably the best explanation I can muster up because it is super simple and I dunno how to explain simple things

 

@oinuk What changes would you make btw

 

This is a cool idea! It would give Ice Snake some needed utility, though I think this should be coupled with an increased freezing time.

 

not necessarily specific/thought out changes because i'm not smart but i'd like some clarification on a few things

can a second spell of ice snake proc the damage, or is it only from alternate damage sources? (additionally, do effects like burning ground or poison ticks proc it?) (do attacks from allies proc it, to allow for more supportive roles?)

how long would the effect last? (so i can use funny ambivalence heavy spell ha hah ha heh ahhe hahhah hh ah a hhjsf,dhd,fg.,fsfha ghh a)


also probably balance changes, so i'd prefer to see some base concept numbers and conversion %s


cool overall suggestion though

 

The wording there was pretty ambiguous, but allies could proc it.
I see no reason why burning ground/poison or a second ice snake wouldn't proc it (except if ice snake spam would deal far too much damage?) unless it is restricted purely to melee hits, which I think is another viable option especially if you're spellsteal or doing raids with someone that runs a melee focused or even hybrid build.

I was thinking either lasts until the mob is hit again (so basically indefinitely) or somewhere in the neighbourhood of 3-5s.

~150% damage
~40% earth damage
are the numbers I was thinking of, I'm not actually sure how to calculate damage very well so these numbers are just educated guesses on what wouldn't be too extreme but still useful

 

Ice Bear says its similar to Ice Bear's ice snake idea where it would apply fragility which increased damage taken to anything hit for 1 second. However, Ice Bear likes this better as it seems a lot more balanced so it doesn't increase team dps to the degree Ice Bear's idea would have originally. Ice Bear is a bit confused on how the damage will be calculated. Will the person who broke the bind cause the damage calculation or is it always based on the caster of ice snake? Ice Bear would prefer it to be caster based otherwise it would be quite useless if a shaman totem is nearby.

 

I really wanna select the last option "For Bixlo" But this is a good suggestion so I have to vote yes.
<3 u dwicy for adding me to your poll

 

Byooompppp

 

Bumping again

 

Honestly, I think that it should be reverted; it's honestly kind if annoying to land meteors on fast bosses now. I did Bob's Reincarnation the other day and the bastard walked out of half of my meteors.

That said, I like the idea of it giving a damage bonus to the next attack instead of doing damage itself, as it's pretty useless as a damage dealing spell and having something that can be used to set up for a meteor or for an ally's spell would be really nice.

 

me when bump

 

This would actually be an amazing change for mage, but numbers may have to be tweaked at the end of the day to make up for the extra damage. Even if meteor/heal get nerfed, I would prefer having an usable ice snake.

Also this would make Gaia viable.

 

bumpmuibmumpppo

 

uiadhnaiuwnhafisu bynmump

 

The way I'd like to see a binding effect is more like a timed "tag" on an enemy whereby being hit causes them to take damage when they become free of ice snake's effects. This prevents spamming (since this would only refresh the slow and cancel the dmg tick) and, at least to me, seems like a more simple design choice than just "give mage a curse effect", especially on a class that is already an amazing support class.

 

I think they should remove CCI for icenake but so, that you can only immobilize the target once and then there is a cooldown on when the effect of the slow is applied again. This would make icesnake not useless but hurray bosses are able to move again.
Suggestion would be the cooldown be anywhere from 5-10 secs, see icesnake as a tool that IF the enemy comes too close you have a form of slowing him down and not having to reposition yourself with teleport.
At the current state in my opinion icesnake is battleing with warrior for the most useless spell in wynn....

Happy Wynncrafting

 

bump masopdfmaspofmasopgn